🎃🎃🎃Happy Halloween🎃🎃🎃

October 31st, 2018

1 year, 5 months and 1 week
Thailand, Bangkok, Thonburi Ward

samuel.montague@myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you)

What an exciting week this has been!

Sunday
So we had talked this Sunday service to so many different people.  We were really trying to get as many people that are learning with us and members to come to Sacrament this week. We had a special missionary devotional, which had lots of musical numbers intermixed with short talks about different aspects of our faith and of being a member missionary. We ourselves performed a song, an arrangement of I Know That My Redeemer Lives. We were practicing it during Saturday night in the chapel. We were using the microphones and what a coincidence that sports night, which was happening at the same time, moved itself to the upstairs portion. It's the cultural hall, but it's also the overflow so it is also equipped with speakers. So all of the people that went to sports night heard us practicing - including all of the little kids that are learning with us. The miracle family from last Monday, that's gone to English and sports, love us and we go to their house sometimes to teach them.  They all heard it and were so excited to come to sacrament to listen to us sing.

Not nearly as many people came on Sunday as we hoped. One of the dozen kids came on time, and he sat there the entire meeting and he listened and he enjoyed it. Right as we sat down from our performance towards the end, we discovered that there were four more that were waiting outside the door that were just too nervous to come in. We brought them in (I'm not sure if they heard us or not) and then were there when the primary sang (they loved it). As they walked to the first of two hours of primary, which we also attended and helped out with, one more of their friends showed up. It was such an awesome day. In anticipation for this surge of people at church, I brought four ramen packets and I made it for the potluck lunch we always have. All of the members were so surprised that 1. I knew how to make ramen and 2. that they were going to be able to eat ramen for lunch.

That evening we all went to Asoke to listen to President Callister (Sunday School General President) and Elder Meuhrs (Asia Area 1st Counselor). That was also a very joyous reunion for me to see many members from the Bangkok areas, who somehow also remember me, and who just about all commented on how much skinnier I've gotten.

Monday

So it's our turn for Dan's house, the member of the royal family whom we visit weekly on Mondays. Because there's three companionships, we've been rotating through. I last went the second week in this area with Elder Schindler. On this day I went with Elder Wegwitz, my companion. We didn't have that much planned in the afternoon, so we decided to invite as we started walking in the general direction of his house. It's typically a long and expensive taxi ride mainly because of the horrendous traffic. So we were walking, and then we started towards a dead end. It was an awkward spot in our course, because to cross the river (the dead end) we had to either get in a taxi and go up to a bridge, get a taxi and go down towards another bridge (neither of which was particularly close), or cross on a boat. We had a little bit of time, so we decided to just cross on a boat. We were originally just going to cross to the other side and then get a taxi and go, but we decided to take a boat to the pier that was closest to our destination. That was a fun ride and an adventure in and of itself, but that's really only where the adventure began. 

Once we got off, we saw this lady throwing large chunks of bread at a huge mass of large fish just jumping all over one another to eat these full slices of bread. We joined in the fun with her, and we were chatting with her, and then the birds decided to also join in and they were landing on the water and trying to eat some of the smaller pieces of bread even as the fish were doing it. It was really wild. We continued on and came across a small group of children playing a version of jacks. We joined in briefly before all going to go play soccer together; unfortunately we were unable to because they took too long to find a ball. We invited them all to English and continued on our way. On the path as we walked, we came across a Christian School. These are fairly common because Catholics and other sects like to build schools and educate people in non-european countries. Except this particular school was decked out with all kinds of large pieces of art and sculptures and so we had to go in and take pictures with these religious pieces. As we continued on our way, we were walking by a music store when I decided to hop on in because the store owner was playing this weird instrument. Apparently it's a Chinese harp. And apparently he just happens to be a royal musician, and is a teacher at an academy, and plays extremely well. And he just happened to give us a personal performance because I asked for it. #TenderMercies. We finally ended up getting to Dan's house, 10 minutes early having paid a 30th of what we normally would have, but having had all these adventures on the way. During our sessions with Dan, we talk and just interact with him for an hour. Today we decided to sing a lot of songs and we played a whole bunch of games and it was just a lot of fun.

Tuesday
District Council today was swell as our inspired district leader decided to invite some fairly recently converted members to come and meet with us. We were able to ask them questions about Buddhism and about how the Thai think and interact with religion. Overall it was a really great experience and a learning opportunity into how the Thai people think and act and the role that Buddhism plays in their lives and the impact that it has and some of the challenges and difficulties associated with the process of learning about and converting to Christianity. 

My fellow district members - 1 chair is equal to 1 transfer left

For English, we threw a fun Halloween party for all of the children and young adults and even the adults that went. We started out with teaching them the vocabulary and associated actions with trick-or-treating, then had the young group of students who could not speak English that well go downstairs. They went trick-or-treating to doors that were manned by the advanced students. They had fun going around and getting candy and telling what costume they pretended to have on and giving sounds and actions. We went upstairs afterwards and had a few more games planned for them, including werewolf (in English), a contest to see who can eat the donut the fastest off of a string, a mummy wrapping competition, and other fun small little things that help remind us of Halloween. We all had a great experience with this American holiday.

Wednesday 
Today was Pday! We found out transfer calls this morning, because there's so many people involved in leadership or training (President Hammond calls them himself), that it took all of last night and a little bit of this morning. We got our calls though, and I'm staying! I'm going to be receiving a transfer 3 (meaning this is his 3rd transfer in country or 18 weeks) by the name of Elder Halversen (he is amongst the first group of greenies I brought in as an office elder!). My companion is staying in Bangkok, but he's going to the northern part to be follow up trained by someone else. 

I always love things that are new and things that change because it helps keep us on our toes and helps keep us reliant upon the Lord, and it just helps us have so many new experiences. But, because today is Halloween I threw a Halloween party. I invited a lot of missionaries from throughout our Zone, and I think almost all of our Zone came. We had about 16 to 18 missionaries, which is about eight or nine companionships. We started off with playing Scattergories, we ordered some pizza, then we played a quick little game with some Oreos before going into the kitchen to carve watermelons and bob for apples. I don't know what I remembered bobbing for apples was, but it was so much more difficult than I thought. I ended up doing it twice, and I felt like I was drowning the entire time. I was so useless with grabbing these apples which is somewhat probably because we had a huge bucket of water that they put them in it was hard to get a grip or anything, but I was not the only one that was dying in that water. It was a lot of fun though, and all of the other missionaries were hyping it up which made it so much more exciting. With some of these apples we made a cinnamon apple compote treat?

I'm not really sure what to call it, but I did my best to just make a treat my mother would make sometimes, but with no recipe. It wasn't quite there, but it was pretty close and it was really good. We also had some no-bake cookies, and of course lots and lots of watermelon. Besides these fun activities we just had an awesome time talking and being friends with all of these missionaries. Being a missionary is such an awesome time because of how quick and how strong of a bond you can make with others, how good friends you are. It's really weird. But we're all best friends. The rest of the day is being spent with emailing, cleaning up, packing for my companion, and just getting ready to go to scripture night and to clean the church.

As I'm sitting here speech to text in my email for the week, I was thinking about what something spiritual that I could share with others. And I'm looking at my wall where I put up a lot of different pictures of Christ and scriptures and just thoughts that I've written to help me stay focused and to motivate me. And something that really just sit out is ว่า: 

"What Would Jesus Do?"

Honestly, if we follow this advice we would be perfect. Christ was the only perfect man to walk this Earth, and it is because He was not just a man. He is the literal Son of God. As we strive our best to emulate Him, as we make goals and work on developing ourselves to become more Christ-like, we realize that the overall arching principal to learn is that we can't always do what Christ did . . . because we are dumb. 555 it is as simple as that. It is guaranteed we will always make some kind of mistake. But that is alright because we have the Saviour- who through him, it will be all right if we try our best and if we accept Him and if we accept His merciful hand which is always extended towards us. That does not excuse us from asking ourselves what would Jesus do and to strive our best to always emulate him, but I do so testify that Christ is there, and that He is willing and wanting and waiting to help. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.